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The publisher that struck gold when it bought the rights to Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy has been snapped up by Hodder & Stoughton, the British publisher behind Sir Alex Ferguson’s biography and Stephen King, John Le Carré and John Grisham.

Quercus put itself up for sale in January after a poor Christmas triggered a profit warning that reduced its value to £6 million. Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hachette, has paid £12.6 million, or 60p a share, for the business. Orion, another part of Hachette where the Quercus founders previously worked, had been linked with a takeover.